River & Stream Biome Plants

River and stream biomes encompass the plant-covered banks close to their sides.

Streams and rivers are part of the freshwater biome, which also includes lakes and ponds. They usually begin at a source in higher and cooler climates than their mouths, which is where they empty into larger bodies of water, traditionally other water channels or the ocean. Plants are an important part of freshwater ecosystems, adding oxygen to water, detoxifying it and serving as a source of food for animals dwelling there.

Algae Adaptations

Algae of many types populate streams and rivers, but only in specific locations. Generally, it isn’t found near their mouths where water is clearer and colder and often faster moving. It shows up near the middle of the stream or river, when water temperature decreases, water slows and the banks draw farther apart. An alga is a simple plant, but provides oxygen to the water it populates as well as a food source to animals living in it.

Cattail Types

Cattails (Typhus spp.) are common in ponds and lakes as well as on the shores of slow-moving streams and rivers. Examples include common cattail (Typha latifolia), native to North America, and dwarf cattail (Typha minima), also called bulrush, miniature cattail and least cattail. Both are hardy in U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones 3 through 10. Cattails, when planted in streams or ditches, may remove pollutants from the water, but they can also become invasive in many aquatic environments.

Rush Species

Rushes are quite common in freshwater streams. Winter scouring rush (Equisetum hyemale), hardy in USDA zones 4 through 9, is also called rough horsetail. It is commonly found growing on the edges of larger bodies of water, including lakes, rivers and ponds, although it can pose a nuisance in smaller bodies and on home properties as well. Somewhat better behaved is the common rush (Juncus effuses), also hardy in USDA zones 4 through 9, but not spreading as quickly.

Aquatic Trees

Many types of trees are adapted to the often-flooded bottomlands near rivers or the wet, marshy banks of streams. Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), hardy in USDA zones 5 through 9, is a deciduous shrub that grows happily along riverbanks and in flood zones. Black willow (Salix nigra), hardy in USDA zones 2 through 8, prefers the moist margins of streams, ponds and lakes. While many plants balk at standing water, these trees adapt readily to it.